Chandralekha: Woman, Dance, Resistance

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CHANDRALEKHA

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WOMAN

DANCE

RESISTANCE

Rustom Bharucha I/

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INDUS An tmprlnl of HarperCollins Publishers India

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INDUS An Imprint of HarperColllos Publlsbns India Pvt Ltd 7/16 Ansari Road, New Deihl 110 002

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Published 1995 by lndus

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Copyright O Rustom Bharucba 1995 Rustom Bharucha asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of thJs work ISBN 81-7223-168-7

Book & jacket desi&n by Dashrath Patel Typeset in 11 pt Garamond by Megatechnlcs 19A Ansari Road New Deihl 110 002

rtsbts reserved.

No pan of thJs publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior pennlssion of the publJshers.

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Printed in India by Gopson.s Papers Pvt Ltd A-28 Sector IX Nolda 201 301

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If they see breasts and long hair coming they call it woman,

if beards and whiskers they call it man: but, look, the self that hovers in between is neither man nor woman 0 Ramanatha DEVARA DASIMAYYA (trans. A.K. Ramanujan)

Acknowledgements The structure of this book was framed in September 1991 at the Bellagio Centre in Italy where, as a writer-in-residence, I found an ideal space in which to connect the multiple strands of the narrative. Shortly after, I was invited most graciously by Murari Ballal to draft the earliest chapters of the book at his home in Ambalapady, Karnataka. 1brough the intervening years (and earlier, as this book was researched between 1989-91), I have been supported by many of Chandra's friends and associates in India and other parts of the world. I hope to be forgiven for not naming these numerous friends who have nurtured the innerworld of this book. To name just a few contributions, I would like to acknowledge the insights I have received from Chandra's dancers and perfonning artists, both past and present, those who remain with her and those who have moved on to other pursuits. Among the numerous feminists and women who have contributed to Chandra's work as active supporters, observers, critics, I would like to acknowledge in particular the sensitive observations of Kamala Ganesh, Vibhuti Patel, Neela Bhagwat, Vidya Shankar and Indira Jaising. Some meetings with unknown women at seminars and backstage after a performance have been very fleeting but intense. The emotions underlying these exchanges have lingered with me.

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The core of my acknowledgements, however, is centered around three people without whom this book would not have been possible - Sadanand Menon, Dashrath Patel, and Chandra herself. Without their collaboration and close tuning to each other's sensibilities, there would have been no work to be addressed in the flfSt place. To Sadanand, who knows Chandra more deeply than anyone I know, I am indebted for his unfailing generosity and presence of mind in addition to his empathetic reading and editing of my manuscript. To Dashrath, I am grateful for his keen eye and warmth of feeling which have contributed so perceptibly to the design of the book. And fmally, to Chandra... what can I say? Neither her fan nor sbisbya but intimate critic, I have been opened through her creativity to knowledge that would have been denied to me - the mandalas inscribed in our bodies; the intei1elationships between Yoga, martial arts, and dance; the rigour in sensuality; the links between breath and planetary forces; and so many deviant, playful, and. fluid sources of energy that have brought me closer to an understanding of femininity within myself. Without problematising this connection, I trust that it underlies the narrative which follows, testifying to some of the sources of renewal and resistance that I have imbibed from Chandra. In a very small way, this book is a tribute to what I have received.

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Contents 1

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Me1nories of the Body Return to Olildhood · Ufe with Baba Harindranath's Legacy The 'Trinity': Baba, Guru Ellappa, and Dashrath The 'C-Ontradiaion' of IJfe and Dance Art and Survival

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Early

37 Qa1 eer

Bharatanatyam: An 'Invention' of tradition? · For and Against Devadasis Balasaraswati's Parampara Owidra's Devadasl Conceprualising DelJadasl TUlana

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living in the Sixties Kamala An illumination through Flowers Sources of ~perience J\TflVfl(l,vba

Homage to the sun Exploring the Media: a. POSte1s

b.

Cinema

4 The Politics of Friendship

Dashrath's Dilemma The Space of 'Skills' Workshop

103

Leaming through Posters

Street Theatre The Raid After the Raid

125

5 The East-West Danoe Encounter Problematising the Encounter Primal Energy Mandala

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147

Angika 'Q>mnic Energy' Martial Sequences The Animal World The 'Grammar' of· Bharatanatyam The Socialisation of Dance The · 'Male Gaze' of the Vamam Naravabana Tlllana The Impact of Angika

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7 After Angika The 'Critical' Reception Power Play Namaskar

195

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Background on Lilat.lQli Principles of Selection 'Amala kanuda-rasbe.... ' 'Pancbamsbo-alUIUlal... ' 'Yatam-b,,..,,,.

~~--1w..•• I

'Cbakrakrauncba-akulita salile... ' 'Haras-taras-tarunya ... ' Touring Lilavati

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217

Homage to Breath Asana&'Adavus Returning to Navasraba Krltis The Opening of P1'ana Plane~ Yantras From Namaskar to 'Shanti' Beyond the Disaster of Opening Night

10 Relationships with Dancers The Body Freed and in Pain Dancers on Chandralekha 1be Male Dancer 'Foreign' Connections The Walk Workshop Against Aridity Outside Professionalism

241

11 In Searrlt -o f rreedom 'Freeing Myself from the Wall': Request ·concert One More News

270

Fire, Counter-Fire

Posters for the Women's Movernent St,w Sabaja

12 Sri: a. Pre-Hi&ory b. The Fer11inine Principle c. Towards Empowe1 r11ent· Beginning with Sakambbarl Against Motherhood · Dreaming of the Future

307

Postscript

337 342 353 355

Notes Pbotosrapbs

Index

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Introduction The subject of this book is a woman called Otandralekha. Known primarily (and perhaps, misleadingly) as a dan.c er, she has been associated with more aeative disciplines and • activities than almost any other artist living in India today. She has danced; choreograptied; designed exhibitions, poste1s, logos, graphics; conducted workshops with development and feminist groups; written poems, tracts, essays, and a novella; travelled widely and commined herself to the 'art of living' in a highly original and aeative way. If this sounds somewhat too rapturous, I should also add that she has struggled 'to be free/be he1self' by fighting numerous battles with the cultural establishment and the State. Within the last twelve years she has resisted censorship and fought a false charge of 'sedition'. She continues to fight, fumly convinced that 'freedom' can never be taken for granted. Through this ongoing struggle, Chandra (as I addre&, her in this book, and as she is normally addressed by her dancers and associates) has emerged as a woman whose life is as vital as her art. Not only has she broken new ground in the 'language' of dance, she has resisted the norms of 'Indian womanhood' by rejeaing the institutions of family, maniage, and motherhood. Resplendently, yet consciously, she re1nains her own woman. Inevitably, the very exceptionality of Chandra makes it difficult for any writer to categorise her. Her subjectivity is intense, and perhaps egotistic at times, but never isolationist. On the contrary, she has always atte111pted to connect her work to all kinds of move1nents committed towards realising a more humane and ecologically balanced world. To categorise her as an 'iconoclast' is to negate the depth and range of her involvements with varied groups of people particularly in the 'alternative' and 'marginal' sectors of society. While some of Chandra's critics may disagree with the 'style' of her 'radical will', few would deny that she has the

courage of her conviction. Quite simply, she practises what she preaches. Her theory has been tested through work. Moreover, in an age when most artists (and dancers in particular) seem obliged to kowtow to the establishment, if not play to the whims of ministe1s in increasingly humiliating ways, it is refreshing to know that we have an artist like Chandra who can say in plain terms: 'I exist in spite of you'. At one level, this could be regarded as a disingenuous statement beca••se Chandra is now becoming increasingly famous as a choreographer. 'The days of brickbats are over', as she says reflectively, 'people are now beginning to dive at my feet'. It should be re111embered, however, that this change in attitude towards Otandra (officially recognised by her 1990-91 award for 'Creative Dance' from the Sangeet Natak Akademi) is of very recent origin. Since she staged her fll'St production Devadasi in 1960, the road has been rough. Indeed, we tend to forget that Chandra has opted out of dance for long stretches of time in her volatile career. Between 1962-84, she staged just one production, Navagraba (1972), participating in all kinds of activities relating to politics, education, fe111inism, design, far removed from the norms as,umed by the dance establishment. Much of what we see today in Chandra's most widely acclaimed work - Angika, Lilavati, Prana, Sri and · Yantn:i - has evolved after years of meditation, fantasy, and experiments in other forms and media. It is, perhaps, only inevitable that the narrative of this book should be intercut with the lives of many artists, thinkers, and companions who have played a significant role in the shaping of Chandra's creativity. Harindranath Otattopadhyay, Guru Ellappa Pillai, Balasaraswati, Rukmini Devi, Dashrath Patel, Sadanand Menon are just a few of the figures in the landscape of this book, who have either influenced Chandra deeply or with whom she has lived and interacted at c1eative levels. If I had attempted to write a biograph:Y' of Chandra, I would have had to dwell on many

more relationships which are fleetingly addressed in .this book. My focus, I must emphasise, is not biography, but the study of a particular artistic sensibility and the sources that have contributed to its growth in concrete ways. This fact needs to be e111phasised because there is a certain mystique around Chandra largely fed by the media, which has tended to sensationalise her as a 'silver-haired danseuse', a 'revolutionary mystic', and even a 'living Shakti'. Most of these reports have focused on her personality rather than her work, with a subtext that suggests a rather torrid and flamboyant life-style. In demystifying this totally false image, I have been compelled to highlight the critical nature of my inquiry dwelling on those aspects of Chandra's biography that are pertinent to her work. My own association with Chandra began almost seven years ago when I invited her along with my German colleague, Manuel Lutgenhorst, to participate in an adaptation of a one-woman, wordless play called Request Concert by Franz Xav~r Kroetz. From this first involvement, I have deepened the relationship over the years through conversations, discussions, rehearsals, and performances. Predictably, the closest moments have been spent backstage when I have accompanied Chandra and her troupe on tour to Germany, Italy, Canada, and in India to a range of places in Jaipur, Baroda, Auroville, and smaller towns like Manchikere and the village of Heggodu in Kamataka. It is on these travels that I was able to observe the dynamics of the group at very close quarters. My most important task on these tours was to 'protect' the performance space from any kind of undue interference particularly moments before the show would start. It is during this time that Chandra's group improvises a ritual of solidarity backstage - not a puja, but just a holding of hands in a circle followed by movements, deep breathing, and meditation. It is telling that I have not participated in this act myself, maintaining a certain distance from the 'inner core' of ·the group.

This very choice, however, is what has enabled me to write this book from the perspective of a 'critical insider' rather than a 'total insider' or a 'critic'. What I have attempted is to find the necessary balance between 'distance' and 'belongingness', expressing my very real affinities to Chandra's ideas on creativity, femininity, and resistance, with a more critical perspective of her life and work within the larger cultural history of ~t-Independence India. Woman, Dance, Resistance: these are the central motifs of the book which are thoroughly implicated in each other's discourses. One cannot schematise them into water-tight compartments. On the contrary, one is constantly flowing into the other. Thus, instead of structuring the book on rigid Jines, I have opted for a narrative based on what I would like to describe as a web of inner connections. Occasionally, I have had to intervene more academically as in the section on Devadasi, where it was expedient to provide a short but critical account of the history of Bharatanatyam. I should add, however, that I have consciously minimised the use of technical language to describe Chandra's choreography, focusing on principles of movement rather than the minutiae of dance terminology. In the final chapters of this book describing Chandra's relationship to feminism and the women's movement, I have found it necessary to broaden the critical inquiry by addressing the ... different 'languages' that Chandra has explored beyond dance - in theatre, posters, exhibitions, visual texts, and polemical interventions in women's conferences. The range of this book is undeniably wide focusing as much on the sensibility and consciousness of a particular artist as on a spectrum of social and political forces that have shaped the cultural history of India since Independence. Writing about Chandra has necessitated a confrontation of some of the burning questions of our times concerning art and survival, the invention of 'tradition', the fundamentalist appropriation of 'Indian culture' in the name of 'religion', as well as larger contradictions relating to 'festival culture',

censorship, and the increasingly difficult quest to sustain 'alternatives' within the cultural ·politics of our times. Chandra's work embraces these contradictions in which she is, at one level, implicated and yet resistant through her deep and continuing struggle for self-realisation as a woman. If I have been inspired to write this book, it is not simply because Chandra is a 'great artist', but more specifically, because her art, in my view, is vital to our times. It is not hagiography that concerns me but a living history in which we can learn to cliscriminate the possibilities of our cultural praxis with greater rigour and sensitivity.

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I wisl1 to invent a l1eredity for me I would like to think wistfully of my grandfather being a still-born baby who died as soon as he was born. Memories of the Body

To begin on a note of fantasy, an 'invented' heredity rather than a biography, Chandra's rejection of genealogy and the institution of family is playfully evident in this excerpt from her '68 Poems. Never is the family a source of nostalgia for her as it so often is for many Indian dancers, who invariably ascribe their artistry to the blessings received from a particular heritage. Nor is the family an object of fear for Chandra, some kind of dark secret that she represses silently. If I had to choose a single word to describe her attit~de to the family, I would say that it is a non-issue. She is neither derisive nor bitter about it. Indeed, she has lived independently since she was seventeen. At home you will find some mementoes of the past relating primarily to her work-books, posters, handicrafts, terra cotta figures, a selection of brass vessels (collected, I should add, as much for the beauty of form as for the utilitarian purpose of cooking). But nowhere can one find · the familiar memorabilia associated with Indian families: garlanded portraits of ancestors, wedding photographs, pictures of babies. These, I think, would be odious to

Cl1andra. With tl1is scn1pulously defined re;ection of tl1e fa1nily, where then does one begin? Most memories of cl1ildl1ood are frequently forgotten; if remembered, they also tend to be invented. Chandra's earliest memory (which could be a viable point to begin an exploration of her creativity) is not a fiction like her 'still-born' grandfather. 'It is not what I have invented', as she emphasises, 'but something that happened'. These to her mind, are the only memories to be trusted: the memories of the body. What was it? A child (herself) picking up some shelllike objects, gathering them in a kerchief, and placing them in the corner of a living room, a room with a lot of sofas and armchairs. Then, the family goes in for dinner. As they are about to leave, they see the shells scattered on the floor. And out of these shells, living creatures are crawling. 'Those shells had life in them', Chandra remembers. In all probability, they were minuscule clams, her first concrete images of contact with nature. As a child, she was almost always outdoors, roaming the numerous compounds attached to the houses in which she was privileged to live. Invariably, she sought out areas with rough and dense undergrowth, and would sometimes fall asleep under trees. 'Theq father's peon would come with a lantern - yes, it was a lantern, not a torch - and carry me into the house', Chandra recalls, adding that her mother 'would get into a real state because it happened so often'. A _need to be outdoors, sleeping under trees, being awakened, carried indoors: these are some of the recurring motifs in Chandra's memories of childhood. What needs to be stressed here is not so much the location of these memories and their rootedness in biographical details, but their sense of life that seems to emerge from 'another time'. At least this is how Chandra herself tends to value memories as an artist. Remembering the touch of a shell at another period in her life, she continues to marvel at the experience and is genuinely puzzled. 'The touch was so familiar. The colour in the inside of the shell - mauve - something I had seen

before, physical, sensual. This kind of experience cuts across time'. So also the combination of red, black, and white, her favourite colours for which she is known so well - they are intensely familiar to Chandra, evoking inexplicable sensations. 'These colours remind you of blood. They take you somewhere in time that you have kn~wn in your body'. Then, reflecting on the difficulty of representing memory, she adds, 'That word "known" does not have a linguistic meaning'. It is more like a perception that has been 'memorised' by the body, surfacing at moments in life with a clarity that is startling, yet elusive. It is this 'memory of the body' which has haunted Chandra throughout her life that has enabled her to remember the minutiae of dance even after long breaks and stretches of silence. In more recent times, she has been inspired by the 'ancient memory' of mythic figures like Sakambhari and the matrikas, which she has attempted to embody through perfonnance. The actual construction of these images and the feminist responses to them will be discussed later in the book. For the moment, let us simply acknowledge the potency of these images in Chandra 's 'memory' as an artist.

Return to Childhood To return to Chandra's childhood and ceaseless need to be outdoors, to 'run wild, naked, and free', there are some memories that blend with thoughts of her family, others which exist in defiance of the family as an institution. Perhaps, one of Chandra's most tender memories relates to her father. She remembers his voice early in the morning, just before dawn, 'Like to come for a walk?' Instantly, Chandra is up, raring to go out in the open in the dark night, and sit somewhere near a railway track. It is this sense of the 'open' in which she traces her earliest images of freedom. Her sense of freedom was, to a large extent, stimulated through travel. At different points in time, her family had

lived in Saurashtra, Pune, and at one time, in Aden. Gujarat is, originally, Chandra's home-state, but she is not rooted there geographically. Since the age of seventeen, she has spent most of her time in Madras and for the last fourteen years at least, has lived by the sea on Elliots Beach. Her peripatetic existence as a child has clearly influenced her more recent perception of herself and most of her friends as 'urban nomads', a cultural phenomenon which will be described later. Some facts of Chandra's childhood are worth noting. Her father was a free-thinking doctor in whose company she found stimulation and comfort. 'My real contact', as she once confided in a rare outburst of emotion, 'was with my father and none· else'. What she respected most about him was his 'life of the mind'. In his library (which is almost always synonymous with Chandra's memory of her father), she read a wide range of books, 'devouring' them without necessarily understanding everything she read. It was an ambitious reading list by any standard, including the Ramayana, Mababbarata, · the Bbagavad Gita and commentaries on these texts. At the same time she read Manusmrltt which provoked her first suspicions of patriarchal values apart from influencing her early decision to remain unmarried. Among foreign classics she read Thoreau, Ruskin, Ingersoll, the complete plays of Bernard Shaw (Anne from Man and Superman being one of her favourite characters), and a lot of Dostoevsky ('to soak in the atmosphere'). Frequently, Chandra discussed these books and issues of freedom with her father, countering his pragmatism with dreams of a more individual, less 'responsible' existence. In her father, who often joked about the excess of omniscience in the Bbagavad Gita, Chandra also found an ally for her instinctive rejection of orthodox religious values. If her father was a 'total iconoclast', in her words, her mother was 'highly religious'. She performed many rituals at home in which Chandra showed some interest particularly when it came to performing actions like lighting the lamp with oil, drawing kolams, stringing flowers. However her spirit was more clearly drawn to reading books in her

father's library and roaming about in the compound where Chandra found an 'entire education' in nature. At the age of thirteen, she had her frrst major confrontation with her father. While she wanted to study the fine arts, her father wanted her to graduate from college, believing that she was too young to make decisions which required 'development of the mind'. 'I told him I didn't believe in the development of the mind', says Chandra. 'I wanted to experience things'. Perhaps if Chandra had stayed on at home after high school, these tensions could have resulted in bitterness, even hostility towards the family. Already in her college years, which were spent in Bombay, she was relatively free of parental pressures. Consequently, it is possible for her to look back on this period in her life with a matter-of-fact honesty and grace: 'They (the family) were very nice people. No, there was no repression, no orthodoxy. It was quite a liberal surrounding, but they were conventional. I realised that at an early age. They did not have this need, this compulsion I had, to run away. Where to, I didn't know'. The conventionality of 'family life' has often been the source of Chandra's most witty criticism both in conversation and occasionally in poems. Thus, in her '68 Poems - a collection of irreverent verse written in the summer of '68 - we have some fairly vicious vignettes of a 'man from Cuddalore' sequestered in his 'world of toys', which he meticulously winds while 'waiting for an issue, preferably male' from his 'brand-new wife'. More outrageously, there is a disquisition on farts in which Chandra focuses on an aunt, a 'connoisseur of farts' who can chant the 'sacred OM' through a series of small farts. Apart from versifying on the range of her aunt's farts, Chandra uses this biological propensity to explode the institution of marriage: I have heard it said of my aunt with a wee little fart she blew up her marriage pandal

in fact it flew up . in the air parents, guests, groom, and all. Along with this total irreverence, there is also, in a very

different poem, a more candid admission .of hatred for 'old ladies', especially 'very old ladies.' They are 'cunning', 'selfish', 'inconsiderate', 'jealous of everything good, strong, and healthy.' Most unpardonably, they 'make you feel guilty for no reason.' These snippets from her poems provide some playful clues to Chandra's early distrust of the larger institutions of family, marriage, and the self-righteous morality of 'old ladies.' Even before she had left home, Chandra was convinced that she did not want to get married: 'I would think ... this man and woman who are so different, how can they live under the same roof? Is ·it possible to live like that without hating each other?' Though this statement can be read as a literal comment on 'bad marriages' in general, it also indicates Chandra's early awareness of her own differentiation through self. She knew that she was not like the people around her. At the same time, she didn't know what she would do with her life. Today Chandra is capable of reflecting on the ambivalences of her adolescence: People are so stupid. They keep asking children: What do you want to do? I had no answer at that time. Even where I stand today, I realise that there can be no answer. One's learning is part of a long process. For anyone who is a seeker, I would say that you must know what you don't want to do. That 'No' is very important. Most young· people succumb to pressure in moments of indecision. That's when 'they' can trap you. Defying the imposition of societal norms on her own growth, Chandra gradually moved away from home and created a life for herself. The beginnings of her freedom had

already emerged through her decision to study law in Bombay where she experienced hostel life and the first glimmers of her own search for identity. The study of law itself was not motivated by any conscious need to fight for feminist rights. Chandra was merely 'curious' about it and thought that it would be more useful to study than the arts (which 'you can always do better by yourself). When it came to the finals, however, she decided to opt out of college. At a certain level, it was a gesture of protest against the system, but as Chandra emphasises, it was made at a 'simple, intuitive level. I was not emphatic about the decision. I was confused for a long time.' It was during this period of confusion that Chandra came to Madras, debating whether or not to sit for her exams, in the company of her newly-found mentor and friend, Harindranath Chattopadhyay, whom she lovingly calls 'Baba' to this day.

Ufe with Baba What was it that attracted ~ 51-year old man, a celebrity· who was lionised in the world of arts, to a college girl still in her teens? The question is open to much speculation and has been the source of misunderstanding, gossip, if not sheer bewilderment. Such an open relationship would make headlines today in our increasingly lurid press coverage of artists' lives. In 1949, just two years after Independence, in the proverbially conservative city of Madras, this kind of relationship was altogether unprecedented. Nonetheless, if it was sustained, nourished and gradually accepted, it was not only because of the sheer weight of Baba's personality. The relationship itself was honest and creative testifying to what Harindranath himself has described as the 'art of living.' In a response that has been frequently quoted, Harindranath claimed that the first time he saw Chandra, 'this thin lovely girl with the long black hair', he knew that she was 'someone special. I could see the spark in her.,. Brushing aside the sexual innuendoes read into the relationship as 'so much damn nonsense', he asserted that, 'Sex as such hardly exists. Each time you create something beautiful you

have.in fact something akin to a sexual experience.' 2 Known for his numerous relationships with women, Harindranath was, nonetheless, equally vehement about his 'affairs' with Nature. Recalling his early morning walks to which he was particularly devoted, he captures a most amazing sense of life: On such walks I have several 'affairs' which are strictly private .. . Enough if I say that they have to do with secret tunnels murmuring down boulders, wild flowers which flash a purity as of God, birds twittering in a thicket, grey fields taking on a sense of awakening ... and a hundred other sights - nay - even sounds and smells ... involving deep love and mating.3

If I had to characterise the very special friendship that existed between Harindranath and Chandra, glimpses of which I have sensed in his writings and her vivid reminiscences, I would say that it was an intrinsically playful relationship. Its intimacy was coloured and textured through a sense of fun . When they met, the 'child-soul' in Harindranath, which he called 'Mana,' had already manifest itself in his writings and perspectives of himself. In his 'toyshop of a world', Chandra was as much a playmate as a source of inspiration. Certainly, what she recalls most of all about the relationship was its abundance of laughter. 'I remember laughing and laughing in his company.' To this day Chandra is known for her laugh, which is strangely girlish and infectious. I remind her of it. With a touch of sadness she acknowledges: 'It is nothing compared to my days with Baba. From morning to evening I remember laughing.' Baba would play the fool, which was a role that he cultivated very seriously and with a considerable degree of skill. Chandra remembers his ceaseless word-play, rhyming, punning, and improvised songs and verse, many of which she recorded as the unofficial 'scribe' of Baba, thereby sharpening her own skills as a writer.

This 'play· with language coexisted with a more serious exploration of different poetic idioms. As one of the most famous poets of post-independence India known as much for his patriotic and satirical verse as for his political songs composed for the Indian Peoples' Theatre Association (IPTA) and the Peoples' Squad, Harindranath had wide contacts with the major poets and literary figure~ of India. In Madras, Chandra remembers meeting poets from all over India. 'People came and stayed. There were also activists of the Telengana movement. We didn't know what the future would hold for them.' There was a constant exposure to other languages and cultural idioms, so much so that when Chandra herself had learnt barely 200 words in her newly-acquired Tamil, she immediately started composing rhymes and verses, some of which came in handy later on as part of her contribution to live-demonstrations and morchas against price-rise and corruption. This proximity to diverse languages and cultures was one of the major characteristics of Harindranath's all-India personality and image. It was nurtured to a large extent through his own childhood in Hyderabad, where (as a Bengali) he was more closely acquainted with 'Christians, Anglo-Indians, Hyderabad Hindus, and Muslims:'4 As he recalls in his autobiography, which deserves to be more widely known and read, 'Mother spoke to father in Bengali, to us in· Hindustani and to the servants in Telugu.'-; Only later did Harindranath develop his instinctive affinity for his mother-tongue, Bengali. This multilingualism is an important trait in Chandra's life and relationships with other artists as well. Her mothertongue is Gujarati, but most of her exchanges with her dancers are in a combination of English and Tamil. To her nattuvanar, Udupi Lakshminarayan, she speaks almost exclusively in Hindi. This openness in Chandra's attitude to languages and cultures in general clearly reflects the antiparochial affinities of her mentor, Harindranath. Both of them are in a sense distanced from their 'mother-tongue' and 'place of birth' - details which have become increasingly valorised in determining the 'rootedness' of Indian artists.

What makes artists like Harindranath and Chandra so special in the Indian context, to my mind, is their 'rootedness' in self which enables them to be 'at home' in a widely disparate range of circumstances. The very concept of 'home' for them is a fluid reality capable of incorporating diverse relationships and experiences that transcend the strictures of 'regionalism.' Chandra's sense of 'home' became more clear (yet elusive) to me one night as she was watching the waves on the sea from her house. Totally at peace with herself, she confided: 'You know what I like about being here. You could be anywhere.' I think this provides a very interesting clue to her temperament as an artist which, to a large extent, accepts and even rejoices in the possibility of anonymity. Along with this very real need for solitude is an obligation to interact with diverse communities. Earlier in her life, this interaction bordered on gregariousness as Chandra participated in Baba's numerous interventions in political, social, and cultural forums. He was the prototype of the 'urban nomad', to use Chandra's phrase. Stirred by a certain restlessness emerging from metropolitan conditions of life and the need to actualise post-Independence ideals, the 'urban nomad' was driven by a combination of inner necessities and external drives, a ceaseless search for inner solitude coexisting with an absorption in a range of worldly desires and pursuits. This 'worldliness' brings me to one of the important qualities that Chandra has derived from Harindranath: a vibrant secular spirit grounded in the multiple resources of our cultural history. I will be dealing with aspects of the 'secular' in Chandra's work at various points in this study. For the moment I would like to contextualise its underpinnings within the specific details of Harindranath's biography.

Harindranath's Legacy It is a little known, yet telling fact that Harindranath's father, Aghorenath Chanopadhyay, was one of India's leading scientists and alchemists in the early half of this century.

A 'walking Encyclopaedia' who had gathered his knowledge from books written in Hebrew, French, German, Greek, Sanskrit, Bengali, Urdu, he instilled in his children a scientific sense of inquiry about the laws of the universe. The formation of stones, the composition of flowers, the flight of birds, the direction of wind, the orbits and speed of stars ... these were some of the ordinary things of life that he reflected on. Tellingly, this scientific temperament was affirmed in constant counterpoint to his wife's more religious explanations of natural laws. As Harindranath reveals in his autobiography: When thunder rumbled my mother would say poetically, 'There goes the golden chariot of God. Its wheels are rumbling. Wonderful! ... and the next moment, scientific father would very politely and tactfully seat us beside him and explain that two clouds had in a hurry met each other with a terrific bump and that friction was created and there was, as a result, the lightning that we saw and the thunder ... At an early age, we got to know, therefore, that light travelled faster than sound. 6 Though their family backgrounds were entirely different, it is significant how Chandra faced the same kind of counterpoint of 'reason' and 'faith' in dealing with her own parents. Over the years, she has evolved a seemingly irreligious attitude to )ife in general and is particularly critical of religiosity in dance. In Harindranath, we find a more double-edged attitude to issues of 'religion' and 'faith.' On the one hand, he is rem~mbered as one of the most outspoken and irreverent critics of religious orthodoxy. Writing at a very different point in Indian history when the separation of 'state' and 'religion' was the sine qua non of a secular 'Indian' identity, he could assert his position with an inimitable directness as in 1be Curd-Seller Quatrains: 0 I am sure that God above Would cease to feel a fool

If every temple would become A hosp_ital or school! Or still more mischievously: I would not call the temple priest A parrot in a cage Since that might hurt the parrot's pride And put it in a rage. 7 However, it is necessary to point out that for all the immediacy of Harindranath's attack on religious bigotry and cant, which Chandra has imbibed and extended in her own critiques of religiosity in art, there is no dismissal of 'faith' as such in his vision of life. In fact, there is an acknowledgment in Harindranath of the profound value of his mother's faith, which 'instilled' in his heart 'a belief 1n a Great Being called God. '8 This God had many names in his house - Bhagwan, Khuda, Devadu - but 'He remained one and unchanging in our home.' More than to ritual or prayer, however, Harindranath was drawn from his youth to a deep awareness of the interconnectedness of elements in the cosmos. In a memorable passage from his autobiography, steeped in a childlike wonder of Nature that he never lost, Harindranath speculated on God as an Artist: \

I always imagined that there was a huge Being called God seated behind the sky paring His nails; I imagined Him to have long, tapering fingers, too! Fingers of an artist. For he would paint the sunset and the dawn and the petals of flowers and the beaks of birds. He could change the tints of clouds at will. So He must be an artist, and, at an early age, I heard it said that long tapering fingers indicated the temperament of an artist. God was an artist who was always in hiding; I never understood why, though. 9 This could be dismissed as a fanciful passage, but it reveals a certain poetic 'temperament' to which seers like Sri Aurobindo responded with considerable warmth. Indeed,

Aurobindo had written a seven-page review of Harindranath's first published work, The Feast of Yo1,tb, in his journal Arya, hailing the young poet 'as a supreme singer of the fusion of God with Nature and human existence.' It is equally necessary to point out, however, that when Harindranath spent some time as a poet-in-residence at the Aurobindo Ashram, he ultimately resisted and rejected the regimentation and austerity of the environment. If we have to speak of Harindranath's 'religion' therefore, it would be best to qualify it as a 'poet's religion', which had been apotheosised by yet another of Harindranath's admirers, Rabindranath Tagore himself, who in a much-quoted comment once remarked, 'After me the mantle falls on Harindranath.' This is not the place to discuss why Harindranath did not ultimately come anywhere near realising this ideal. If I can venture a hypothesis for the purpose of this study, I would say that he was a prodigy who never really grew up. It is one thing for t~e 'little poet of ten' to make Gopal Krishna Gokhale cry with the reading of his poem commemorating the death of Khudiram Bose: When I am lifeless and upon the pyre, ... Mine ashes will arise and sing in joy; It will proceed like music from the fire: Weep not, my country! for this patriot boy!1° Similarly, when we hear the patriotic rhetoric of Freedom Come (written a few days before Independence), we can also accept Harindranath's poetic diction as part of a larger nationalist rhetoric: But we will rise and re-unite the mother, Yes, we shall move together towards our goal; Inseparable, brother one with brother, One India, one nation, and one soul. The problem arises when this kind of Poet Laureate verse became a norm, which is unfortunately what tended to happen with much of Harindranath's later writing. What

remains vibrant today are his comments and verses in a more satirical vein precisely because he was able to shift between different idioms in response to the forum he was addressing. Imagine the electricity created in the seemingly august forum of the Lok Sabha, where Harindranath was once an Independent member, who would occasionally intervene in the sessions with verses like: The increment in railway fares Is very very fair, It does not touch the ministers Who always go by air. Our Five Year Plan is very like A piece of chewing gum We'll draw it out and draw it out For fifty years to come.12 This is where the performer in Harindranath, I imagine, came to the fore, combining the deadly wit of a satirist with the political acuity of an independent activist, a contemporary Vidhushaka who had earned the privilege to speak out. Apart from the doggerel verse in which he excelled, Harindranath could fonnulate his critique in the most concise prose. For example: There are two sorts of democracy in the world: 1) of the people, for the people, by the people. 2) minus the first two and change the spelling of the last: just buy the people.13 Still more memorable are his political songs for which he is still remembered by some of our most radical writers like Mahasweta Devi who took pains to point out to various newspapers that obituaries of Harindranath ( who passed away in 1990, at the age of 92) failed to mention his spirited contribution to IPTA and the Peoples' Squad through his rousing songs. An entire study should be made of these songs not only for their political content and rhetoric, but for the inimitable style of Harindranath's singing that could

switch from classical to folk to sheer buffoonery, and then suddenly and totally unexpectedly switch back to a classical style. It is a most outstanding display of a histrionic temperament, at once frontal in its attack, and yet so full of play, irony and self-mockery. No one, including close friends and artists like Chandra, have been able to capture this unique gift of Harindranath's - to be alone and with thousands of people at the same time, at once jocular and critical, sophisticated and blunt. Most paradoxically, he was most true to himself when he was least serious about himself. This, to my mind, is his extraordinary quality (or quirk) that has yet to be studied in the larger context of political idioms in our cultural history. · I have dwelt briefly on Harindranath's qualities as a writer to provide some context of the artistic temperament to which Chandra was exposed at the very start of her life as a dancer. As yet, she had no career. What she did have was a most playful and creative relationship with a man who was both a friend and mentor, 'Mana' (child-spirit) and 'Baba'. It is in this context that one should situate Harindranath's seemingly authoritarian statement that he 'took charge of her mind.' 14 While one should not underestimate the power and influence of his charisma, it is equally necessary to point out that he was neither a guru nor a father in a conventional sense. As Chandra clarifies: 'Baba helped me to see. He watched what I was responding to. If he didn't agree, he would still go with me.' There was an honesty and freshness in their relationship that was only to be expected in its unorthodox, creative sense of 'play.' In Harindranath's company, Chandra was also exposed to some of the most significant artists and cultural activists. Together they attended seminars, lectures, plays, poetryreadings, and most of all , . dance performances. Bharatanatyam was Chandra's new love, a discipline to which she surrendered after abandoning her study of law. Now she knew what she wanted. to do: dance. Earlier she had participated in some amateur performances which she had enjoyed 'physically', as she puts it. Now she wanted to learn the grammar of dance, and begin as it were a

journey in another language. Predictably, yet perceptively, it was Baba who approved of Guru Ellappa Pillai, as Chandra's first dance teacher, who remains a vibrant presence in her memory to this day. The 'Trinity': Baba, Guru Ellappa, Dashrath In providing a brief biography of Guru Ellappa Pillait a description of his parampara is unavoidable. In terms of his heredity, it is said that he hailed from a family of musicians from Kanchipuram, whose origins can be traced back to one Ashvadhati Pacchamuthu Mudaliar who allegedly could 'make horses dance.' 15 Guru Ellappa's immediate mentor in his youth was his maternal uncle, Tiruvengada Mudaliar, who taught him dancing and the art of nattuvangam, which involved the conducting of ~nee recitals with appropriate music ·and sollukattus (dance syllables). However, the real definition of Ellappa's parampara came not so much from his hereditary links as from his close affiliation to Kandappa Nattuvanar, who conducted Balasaraswati's recitals for many years before leaving for a brief stint at Uday Shankar's Art Centre at Almora in 1938. It was through this rich association with Kandappa that Guru Ellappa developed his own distinctive sensitivities as a musician and nattuvanar. The choice of Ellappa as dance teacher was instinctively right for Chandra's particular sensibilities as a dancer. Though she was enamoured of most dancers whom she saw in Madras at that time, it was Balasaraswati's style that was the most inspiring, particularly the subtlety of its imaginative capacities and, as Chandra emphasises, the 'preparation' for realising these capacities in dance. Through Ellappa, Chandra had direct access to this style, though to the credit of her guru, he never once upheld Balasaraswati as a model for his young student, preferring to focus on her own possibilities as a dancer. Strange as it may seem in the context of Chandra's 'contemporaneity', it should be remembered that she has derived her basic lessons and principles of dance from a

tradition that can be traced directly to the Tanjore Quartene. 16 (Kandappa Nanuvarurr was a direct descendant of the Quartette through the women descendants of Chinnaiah, the eldest member of-the Quartette.) Though one should guard against mystifying the 'continuities' established through such a lineage, it cannot be denied that in the study of any traditional discipline like Bharatanatyam, the actual transmission of the art through the gurn-shishya parampara is a valuable, if not essential, component of the dancer's education. Perhaps, one should also add that one could speak of the vibrancy of a particular parampara with greater conviction in the fifties than today, when most paramparas are either dead or dying or, worse still, manufactured to accommodate contemporary fashions and tastes. Apart from Kandappa's distinctive heritage, it should also be remembered that he was responsible for some major innovations.17 It was during his time as an accompanist for Balasaraswati's perfonnances that the musicians began to sit on one end of the stage instead of standing behind the dancer and moving back and forth in accordance with her movements. In addition, he replaced the melaprapti (the pre-perfonnance playing of mridangam and cymbals) with an 'invocatory prelude.' He also substituted the mukhavina for the flute. All these 'innovations' coexisted along with his commitment towards enriching the musical component of dance - a commitment that was amply recognised by the legendary Dhanammal, Balasaraswati's grandmother, who entrusted him alone to 'carry her vitUl to and from her Friday soirees.' 18 Despite his exposure to Kandappa's 'innovations', Guru Ellappa's method of imparting Bharatanatyam, according to Chandra, was entirely 'traditional.' He showed the movements and position of feet with his hands accentuated by the movement of his eyes. Very rarely were there elaborate demonstrations of movement. Above all, there was no theory. Today, Chandra seizes on this fact and elaborates on it in the · larger context of a dancer's consciousness: · 'I was not taught any theory at all. That area is for the individual to enter when he or she is ready for it. The guru

takes you to that level when you can experience dance. He facilitates your area of freedom, but you have to define it for yourself.' Though Chandra would share the growing resistance among feminist performers to the authority wielded by gurus - and it is significant in this r~gard that she totally rejects any attempt to be viewed as a guru herself, preferring to remain a 'seeker' - the point is, that her own feelings for Guru Ellappa remain very warm and respectful. In this regard, it is the human dimension in the relationship that she emphasises most of all in her reminiscences of his tutelage. As for the one-to-one learning/teaching process, she regards it as nothing less than a luxury: 'You learn about so many things besides dance. The guru's entire experience and conditioning become part of your learning process.' At times it is true that what a dancer may be imbibing need not correspond to the drives and desires of her own consciousness. This disjunction, which can and frequently does become very painful, is confronted only later in the learning process when the dancer consciously works against the directions of her guru. This process of 'freedom' generally begins once the 'grammar' of a particular dance tradition has been imbibed. At still later stages in a dancer's career, as in Chandra's case, there may be a total separation from the initial learning process when the dancer may be motivated to reject or redefine her basic grammar as a performer. At the beginning of a dancer's training, however, Chandra acknowledges the value of 'imitation', so long as the guru in question is worthy · of being called a guru, a 'storehouse of knowledge', and is not just another dancemaster. Today Chandra remembers her frrst lessons with Guru Ellappa with a very perceptible warmth. His criticism could be sharp but was invariably accurate. So close was the tuning in this gu,u-sbtsbya parampara that Chandra is capable of acknowledging that, 'If you went out of tala, it hurt him physically. It was from being sensitive to that hurt that you learned to discipline yourself. Your own lapses became a kind of corrective.'

This is not to deny that after Chandra's dance career was established she continued to have the same kind of uncomplicated relationship with Guru Ellappa. As her own attitude to dance culture became increasingly critical, she found herself questioning the power wielded by gurus. What needs to be emphasised is that she never saw Guru Ellappa as an antagonist: 'In the performance, he knew when you were going to make a mistake even before you made it. He knew your strength and your weakness. He protected you.' One should also point out that Guru Ellappa continued to support Chandra when she began to choreograph her own productions, contributing substantially to her productions of Devadasi and Navagraba with his rich musical repertoire. One other important factor about Chandra's early dance classes is that she always had an audience for them. In his spotless white dhoti with vibbuti smeared on his fore head, Guru Ellappa would arrive early in the morning and teach for two to three hours. Sitting on one side of him was Baba. On the other side was one of Chandra's oldest friends, a 'constant in a floating population' as he likes to describe himself, Dashrath Patel, who was the third member of Chandra's intimate audience. Dashrath is yet another creative, child-like person in Chandra's life who, at some level, refuses to grow up. At approximately the same time that Chandra came to Madras, he too travelled south to study with Debiprasad Roy Chowdhury at the Madras School of Art. Santiniketan was 'too feminine' for him, 'dbila-dbala' as he puts it. Once again, it was Harindranath who served as a go-between. As a friend of Roy Chowdhury, he brought Dashrath and Chandra together. They had at least one thing in common. Both had families back in Nadiad, Gujarat, and they even shared a common surname. Chandra had dropped hers by this time preferring to be known as 'Chandralekha.' What does Dashrath remember of Chandra at this time? He responds with a characteristic bubble in his voice: 'She was always very clear about her values. She never had a facade. Everything she did, she did seriously.' For instance,

in addition to her study of dance, Chandra was also by this time deeply interested in painting. Unlike Dashrath who freely confesses that he resisted formal studies by the time he was in class two, preferring to explore his considerable visual talent, Chandra was capable of conceptualising the history of art. If she talked about Picasso, Braque, Miro, she had entered their work and vision as Dashrath himself discovered when he eventually developed a closer understanding of these masters while studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. The other thing that Dashrath remembers about Chandra in the early ·ftfties was her 'abundant creative energy' and her 'ability to rela,te.' Few people, he emphasises, have both . these capacities to 'create' and 'relate.' At one level, listening to Dashrath about Chandra is to be in the presence of a man in love, who has never ceased to be fascinated by a woman who has served as his 'reference point for seeing.' He also acknowledges her as his most 'sincere critic', the only one, I may add, who is really and truly capable of puncturing his ego. Their relationship is a life-long companionship in which Chandra has scrupulously guarded her own space as an artist and woman. We will dwell on it further as this book progresses, because Dashrath is very much part of Chandra's ongoing work. He is truly the 'constant' in her life. For the moment, let us leave him, a much younger man, sitting alongside Guru Ellappa, watching his friend Chandra dance in the company of one of the 'giants' of the Indian cultural scene, Harindranath Chattopadhyay. Together these three men formed the unofficial 'Trinity' in her work not only as her earliest spectators but also as the chief members in the production team that made her arangetram possible.

The 'Conttadiction' of Life and Dance Arangetram, the formal debut of a young dancer, has become commonplace in Madras city today. More and more families (and fathers in particular) are keen to see their daughters on stage, regardless of their individual interest or

talent. At one level, the arangetram serves as an advertisement not only of the family's wealth and social prestige, but of the potential of the girl in the marriage market. Chandra's arangetram in 1952 at the Museum Theatre in Madras City was a rather different affair. Here there was no family in attendance. As Dashrath recalls, 'Most dancers have mothers and sisters dressing them and attending to their make-up and hair. I did that job for Chandra.' I should also emphasise that Dashrath displayed yet another of his many talents in the arangetram, which has now become one of his trademarks: ironing saris to perfection. Needless to say, while he was helping Chandra backstage, Baba was handling the PR and front-of-house. Guru Ellappa, of course, was the nattuvanar who accompanied Chandra in her first public performance. It appears that the performance was received very well by a 'select audience of musicians, aesthetes, and intellectuals. '19 At some level it cannot be denied that Chandra had a tremendous advantage in having what has come to be known as a 'backer' in Harindranath. What needs to be emphasised, however, is that this 'backer' was also a close friend. Therefore the question of Harindranath exhibiting Chandra for mercenary or selfish reasons did not arise. Baba was genuinely interested in her creativity and growth as an artist. Chandra, on the other hand, was fully aware of his influence but also wary of being seen as his protegee. In this context, she was particularly embarrassed by his introduction and the sound of his booming voice intoning 'Chandralekha.' It took time, however, before she learned to speak for herself in public, which was a long and occasionally painful journey. Already in her debut something happened to Chandra that was distinctly a consequence of her own critical alertness. She has now confronted this 'experience' in public, most significantly at the first East-West Dance Encounter in January 1984 at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Bombay. Here in the midst of a wide range of dancers and artists, Chandra revealed the 'contradiction' between life and dance that had emerged during her arangetram even

while she was dancing. (My first public dance recital) was a charity programme in aid of the Rayalaseema Drought Relief Fund. I was dancing 'Matbura nagarilo '... I was depicting the full-flowing Yamuna, gopikas, Ja/a krida or the water-play of the sakbis, the sensuality, the luxuriance and abundance of water. Suddenly, right in the middle of the performance, I froze to a stop with the realisation that I was dancing and depicting all this profusion of water in the context of a drought. I remembered photographs in the newspapers of cracked earth, of long, winding queues of people waiting for water with little tins in hand. Guru Ellappa was singing 'Matbura Nagarilo.' Art and life seemed to be in conflict. The paradox was stunning. For that split second I was divided, fragmented jnto two people. 20 To the best of my knowledge, this could be the first reflection on classical Indian dance from the experience of a dancer that confronts what feminist performers and theorists are beginning to problematise as a 'split' in performance. 21 Chandra chooses to speak of it as a 'contradiction' both emerging from within the artist herself and as part of a larger 'social contradiction.' Though Chandra admits that she has not been able to resolve this 'contradiction' as an artist, her recent attempts to struggle with its demands (and the vulnerability emerging from such a confrontation) have resulted in some of her most reflective statements, which I would like to discuss in some detail. Let us begin with the -concrete problem of dancing in a country where acute water scarcity coexists with numerous myths about the abundance of water. A realist strategy of representation would be to focus on the 'waterlessness', which could result in a predominantly didactic exposure of the social problem devoid of myth and fantasy. Another possibility (almost de rigeur in classical performances) would be to surrender to the myth of 'abundant, free-

flowing water', oblivious of, if not consciously indifferent to larger social considerations. For Chandra, the first option is devoid of any life-sustaining capacities that can enable us to confront, and hopefully transfonn our reality. The second option, on the other hand, runs the risk of succumbing to a vacuous and dishonest aesthetic. So how does a dancer consciously intervene in such .a situation? It is significant in this regard that Chandra refuses to dichotomise the 'contradiction' between life and dance, preferring to hold on to the possibility that they can be engaged in a vibrant dialectic rather than juxtaposed in black-and-white opposition. Though she has as yet no 'solution' to the problem, she is 'learning', in her words, 'to cope with it, learning to see the beauty of one reality ('water') and the truth of another ('waterlessness').' This is how Chandra attempted to explain her position to me: I would perceive the extremity of the problem something like this. You can show 'reality' directly or you can aestheticise it in a different mode or juxtapose the two. In all these modes, the context is lost. The challenge would be to ... (silence) see the area which is so nebulous where you don't know what to do. How to bring art and life together: what are its joineries? The main thing is not to show the fist by imagining that you can change the world. The true area of reality is your own insignificance, your own limitation, your despair which is real, your love for life. Clarifying her position further through the actual process of thinking it aloud instead of articulating a position already 'worked out' - this is what made listening to her so moving - Chandra added: The thrust of our creative work should be to see our impotency, to face it, and through that to confront those little truths through which one can make a gesture to reach out towards change.

It could be argued that this 'vulnerability' moving towards a tentative gesture of 'change' is not particularly evident in the most famous of Chandra's productions. As we shall examine in much greater detail in the book, the distinctive quality of her choreography lies in her affirmation of the life-sustaining elements of the body and universe. It would be wrong, however, to assume that she is oblivious of those forces and realities wl;lich counter or negate these elements. Significantly, it is in her work dealing more specifically with women such as Request Concert and Sri that Chandra has come closest to exposing her vulnerability as a dancer and choreographer. Here, as we shall describe later, we can actually see a confrontation of those 'little truths' and the beginnings of a 'gesture' reaching out towards 'change.' Art and Survival

Continuing to probe the 'vulnerability' of the dancer, I think it would be useful to situate Chandra's thoughts on the subject in a still larger context of the 'purpose' of her art. Put so directly, it can seem pompous and even misleading as if every artist is bound to have a mission that can be spelled out. In a less formal way, .we could ask: 'Why dance? What does it mean to dance?' These ate the 'basic' questions that Chandra has confronted with, perhaps, a greater degree of self-reflexivity and critical consciousness than almost any other performing artist in India today. Once again, when we arrive at these basic questions in our discussion, Chandra 's intervention is startlingly honest: 'We need art only to the extent that life dehumanises us. We need art to survive.' Not to recognise the humility of this statement is to miss out on understanding Chandra's strength, which emerges out of a confrontation of her vulnerability and not (as it would appear) through a denial of its existence. If Chandra appears to have what some women have described as 'armour', a 'tough exterior', it is because she has been compelled to work out ways of asserting her

freedom in conditions that are increasingly hostile to the exploration of creative work in general and to the interventions of women in particular. Recalling what could be one of the most painful and frightening periods in her life, when she was falsely charged with sedition along with her companion, Sadanand Menon, (details of which will be examined in the section on Skills), Chandra confronts the liberational possibilities of dance in the larger context of survival: I have been wounded many times. The attacks in my life have been very real. I know what it means to feel that chill in your spine. I know what it means when you can feel that your eyes are losing their light and lustre. The power of the eyes is capable of making holes in space. But then you see the dimming of your eyes. At that time you have to pick yourself up from the debris as it were and ask yourself: Can art save me? What can art do for me? Does it have any meaning? Can it heal? Can dance give me back my spine? This is my real quest as an artist.

Hearing Chandra articulate these questions, sitting (I might add) with her spine absolutely straight, there was no doubt in my mind that she had tested these questions through struggle and intense reflection. Seemingly rhetorical questions like 'Can art save me?', which may seem melodramatic in print, or permeated with a false anguish if taken out of context, had an immediacy in the way she confronted the 'wounds' in her words. As always, there was no selfpity in her statement. The tears, if any, were held back. Countering the rhetoric of resistance, Chandra was content to uphold the simple truth that art helps us to cope with life. Nothing more, but also, nothing less. Spontaneously, Chandra breaks her thoughts and listens to the wind that sounds in the background of our discussion, stirring the trees in her garden and ruffling the waves on the sea. 'Why do we need to organise sounds when we can listen to this? Just tuning to the hush of a forest or the

flapping of a coconut leaf ... you cannot duplicate these sounds in art.' For a moment, we are back where we started with a girl who sensed an 'entire education' in nature, falling asleep under trees. But the reality is that art becomes ·necessary in the actual process of growing up and confronting the social and political pressures determined by family, education, religion, and culture. For Chandra, these 'collective institutions' place 'limits' on our freedom by compelling us 'to conform, to adhere, and never to question. 22 Over the years these 'limits' are internalised through a series of 'blocks', even as 'that small, very small spirit at our centre, craves to break away. 23 In response, therefore, to the question posed at the beginning of this section and the end of this chapter - 'Why dance?' - one could say that for Chandra it is the strongest way of freeing herself from some of these ·'blocks' and learning to cope with life not through a derived militancy, but by learning 'how to stand', and thereby, affirm the power of the spine. This process is valuable not just for oneself but for the people and the space around us, which can be energised through concentration. Chandra's 'contemporaneity', therefore, is affirmed at one level through the seemingly 'small', yet crucial attempt, in her words, 'to hold herself together.' 'From being broken up, divided, alienated, I have to learn how to stand.' This insight, expressed in a dancer's language rather than the rhetoric of resistance available in the social sciences1 has a specific discipline and struggle which we shall discuss in the analysis of her training process. It is worth keeping in mind at the very start of this book as we explore her lifein-dance centred in her understanding of the body.

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Early Career After her arangetram, Chandra 'blazed into the dance world' as she laughingly acknowledges, giving solo performances in important cultural centres throughout the country. Significantly, this is a period in her life that she rarely talks about today. If anything, she tends to dismiss it as part of a youthful dalliance with dance that she had not yet recognised at the start of her career. The reception she got as a young dancer was clearly flattering judging from the eulogistic reviews of important critics like A.S. Raman, G . • Venkatachallum and Charles Fabri. Occasionally, Chandra was described as the youthful successor to Balasaraswati, and more glibly, as the 'rising moon' to the 'descending sun' of Shanta Rao. Predicta·bly, Chandra refused to be entrapped by these comparisons and epithets, preferring to think of herself as a dancer in her own right. 'I did not want to be anyone but myself, she asserts today, adding mischievously that most critics had already begun to typecast her as 'vivacious'. That tag remained with her for a long time. It could be argued that Chanclra's career was, to a large extent, facilitated by the wide literary and political contacts of Harindranath. Jawaharlal Nehru and Martin Luther King were just two of the eminent personalities for whom she had danced early in her career. Already between 1952-54 she had visited the USSR and the Peoples' Republic of China as part of the fust Indian cultural delegations to these countries. Baba's influence was also clearly perceptible in her introductions to Uday Shankar, the poet Vallathol, Ustad Vilayat Khan, among other eminent personalities. This combination of patronage and friendship . that Chandra received from Harinclranath was accompanied by an increasing resistance on her part to 'being endorsed.' In a few years, she would free herself entirely from the maledominated world of sabhas and cultural organisations by opting out of dance for alm05t eleven years. In the early

fifties, however, she experienced the 'glamour' and 'excitement' of a successful dance career without seeming to question the contradiction between 'art' and 'life' that had surfaced in her arangetram. All the tensions relating to the representation of Indian social realities were submerged in her 'quick-spirited' performances, where as Dashrath recalls, the bells attached to her feet would be invariably scattered on the stage floor after every performance. After five to six years of her 'whirlwind' career, Chandra's thoughts about dance deepened. More specifically, she began to question Bharatanatyam itself, which was both the 'language' and the 'structure' within which she attempted to define her 'freedom' as a dancer. Unlike her most inspiring role model, Isadora Duncan, the founder of modem dance who had 'freed' herself radically from puritan American culture, both as a dancer and political activist, Chandra had a different 'tradition' to deal with and dance within. Unlike Isadora who almost fetishised the freedom of the dancer as a state of pure spontaneity without any specific discipline, Chandra realised that her parampara to which she had surrendered had its own rigour and demands. Without being questioned, this 'storehouse of knowledge' could easily become a prison. Its 'embarrassment of riches' could be stifling. It is in this context, the refore, that Chandra undertook the important task of 'historicising' Bharatanatyam through her first piece of choreography, Devadasi in 1960, which she may not remember very well today, but whose conceptual implications enable us to view the 'tradition' of Bharatanatyam within its larger political, social, and economic constraints. In this chapter, I shall work towards a brief description of Devadasi, and more specifically, the Tillana which concluded the production, by narrating those aspects of. Bharatanatyam that are relevant to our understanding of its 'tradition' today. This will necessitate a somewhat extended background on the subject leading through the Devadasi tradition and the luminous career of Balasaraswati to Chandra 's first intervention as a choreographer.

Bharataoatyam: An 'Invention' of Tradition? One of the iro_nies about Bharatanatyam is that it continues to be regarded as an 'ancient' tradition despite the increased acknowledgment among some of its practitioners that its heritage is barely 300 years old.1 The term itself Bharatanatyam - which is possibly one of the most presumptuous, all-subsuming categories assumed by a single dance tradition, was invented in the early thirties. There is some confusion as to who used the word for the ftrst time. The redoubtable scholar, V. Raghavan, has implied that he was responsible for it, but the names of E. Krishna Iyer and Rukmini Devi, have also been associated with the early endorsement of the term. 2 Together as the most illustrious representatives of a Brahmin elite based in the city of Madras, these luminaries proselytised the art of Bharatanatyam in opposition to its more 'degenerate' antecedent in sadir. This earlier dance tradition was associated with devadasis ('servants of god') who had, -increasingly in the eyes of respectable society, been reduced to dasis, mere prostitutes. All this is common knowledge in the dance world today, but the historical processes by which sadir was transformed to Bharatanatyam have yet to be fully confronted in the context of an 'invented' tradition.3 Traditionalists would argue, of course, that Bharatanatyam is not an 'invention'·(something made up), but rather is very much part of 'what has been handed down' through 'tradition' over the centuries. That diminutive figure of a socalled 'dancing girl' from the archaeological remains of Harappa has once again been used to authenticate the 'ancient' origins of a particular art. The fact that this girl might not be dancing at all or that she could be more cogently 3&50ciated with the Grama Devata, the 'ancient ever-young Earth Mother of village India',• has yet to be recognised by some of our major dance scholars. Though he was possibly aware of its nebulous associations, it is significant that V. Raghavan included the figure as one of the earliest representatives of dance in his authoritative study of Bharatanatyam. Later, this source became

essentialised through more derivative readings of his scholarship in popular 'histories' of dance in which it is unquestionably assumed that the 'antiquity' of Bharatanatyam can be traced to 'the Rigvedic hymns and to the figurine of a dancing girl of Mohenjodaro statuette.'5 It is through such casual errors of judgement and perception, that the history of Bharatanatyam has been authenticated. On slightly stronger ground, scholars have also affnmed that Bharatanatyam can be traced back to a particular 'form' called Lasya described in at least three different places in the Natyasastra. Here again it would seem that too much has been read into the twelve-part scenario of a Nati, a solo dancer, who waits for her lover with a range of bhavas inspired by shrlngara. For V. Raghavan, once again the most articulate proponent of the theory, there is no doubt that this gamut of feelings relating to separation in love contains 'the origins of the essential themes of the Sabdas, Varnas, and Padams, and even of the Alarlppu, of the Bharatanatyam recital of modem times. '6 One wonders what is gained through such verification which, at a purely thematic level, can be related to so many other dance situations and traditions in India. It is one thing to view Lasya as a classification, a generic type of drama which has inspired many manifestations and regional variations in performance, but it is quite another thing to uphold it as the 'oldest classical form' of Bharatanatyam itself. Such judgements deny the possibility of other dance forms possessing their own connections to these allegedly primary sources of our culture contained in texts like the Natyasastra. It would seem that Bharatanatyam alone has the credentials to affirm a direct line as it were with 'tradition' itself. It is this kind of assumption that enables Rukmini Devi, for example, to state: 'Other forms of dancing, like Kathakali and Manipuri, are obviously variations of Bharatanatyam.'7 The fact that these forms could have their own origins not necessarily mediated through Bharatanatyam or linked to traditional sources is a possibility that is not even acknowledged.

Besides, the very generality of terms like 'Manip1:1ri dance' reveals a total lack of consideration for the variations within the multicultural context of Manipur itself. This kind of cultural categorisation is almost as shallow, if not downright condescending, as V. Raghavan's reference to Assam as a 'cultural outpost' where the 'Nati style of dance' can also be viewed.8 The entire thrust of building up the 'ancient' and necessarily 'sacred' origins of Bharatanatyam was not made for entirely programmatic reasons - in other words, to give Bharatanatyam the 'requisite status' (to use V. Raghavan's phrase) at a time when its immediate heritage in sadir nautcb was being condemned by 'respectable' members of society. At some level, the sanctification of a classical genealogy was strategically necessary, and no one was better prepared to construct (and verify) it than Brahmin scholars like V. Raghavan, E. Krishna Iyer, and Rukmini Devi. But it would be inaccurate (or at least incomplete) if we simply accepted their intervention in the larger context .o f reviving a 'dying' art. Sadtr, after all, was not just being revived; it was being consciously adapted, crafted, and advertised as the 'national dance-art par excellence. '9 Though this could be d i s ~ as hyperbole, it is significant how V. Raghavan chooses to elevate Bharatanatyam within the larger context of the 'nation'. This is ironic, to say the least, because the makers of Bharatanatyam also affumed an aesthetic that would seem to transcend the realities of politics. Indeed, Rukmini Devi would go so far as to say that, 'Like the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bbagavad Gita, Dbammapada, and other scriptures, Bha_ratanatyam is a method of spiritual learning for human en~. Therefore, it is not to be expected to reflect modem life and its ways, which are based essentially on surface expression and ar~ thus artificial and base.' 10 If such is the case then one can only question how such a dance could be regarded as one of the greatest creations of 'the artistic genius of the nation', unless, of course, the 'nation' itself becomes an ethereal category in the spiritual tradition of the Vedas and

the llpanisbads. The 'nation', however, is a political category despite its propensity to be 'imagined' in different ways. Cultural figures like Rukmini Devi and V. Raghavan were also official representatives of a larger cultural movement in ·which 'national identity' was celebrated. This was a different kind of movement from the later . emergence of the Indian Peoples' Theatre Association (IPTA) in which Harindranath Chattopadhyay, for example, had participated. Here nationalism was also advocated not just through an affumation of 'traditional' and 'indigenous' cultural sources but, more specifically, as a critique of imperialism. It could be argued, of course, that for all its mass appeal, the activities of IPTA were ultimately constrained by the largely urban and middle-class moorings of its leaders. But the attempt to organise a cultural movement at a national level cutting across regional, linguistic, and class differences has not been surpassed for the sheer scale of its activities. In contrast, the kind of 'movement' that seems to have been generated around the propagation of Bharatanatyam in opposition to what came to be called the Anti-Nautch movement, was ultimately restricted to a small coterie of aesthetes and art lovers. Predominantly Brahmin and upper class, their constituency was centred around that most august of cultural institutions in India, the Music Academy of Madras founded in 1928. Significantly, this organisation was fonned after the First All India Music Conference was held in Madras in 1927 . in conjunction with a session of the Indian National Congress. The conflation between the promotion of Bharatanatyam and the. propagation of values associated with the Brahmin-dominated Congress lobbies of the Indian elite was becoming increasingly apparent.

For and Aplo• Dcvadasls It was at the Music Academy that E. Krishna Iyer, one of the foremost crusaders of Bharatanatyam sponsored a performance of two devadasis, Jeevaratnam and

Rajalakshmi, better known as the Kalyani daughters. Held in 1931, this performance was apparently not well attended because of the social stigma associated with devadasis whose art Iyer had attempted to propagate earlier by dancing female roles himself in public. The next year in December 1932, he used his rhetorical skills as a lawyer to engage in a verbal battle with Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi, the. first woman legislator in British India who was also one of the ~rliest members of the Women's India Association, founded in 1917 to 'organise women on an all India basis with the objective of social and legal refonns.' 11 Their much-advertised 'battle' conducted in the columns of 7be Madras Matl and 1be Htndu was precipitated by Dr. Reddi, who had reacted sharply to the presence of devadasis at an official function honouring the Chief Minister of Madras, the Raja of Bobbili. 12 Reddi's repugnance for 'these Devadasis' was scarcely concealed by her excessively selfrighteous condemnation of their 'uAwholesome practice'. Iyer, on the other hand, invoked the 'Muses' in his advocacy . of an 'Art minus Vice'. Much was written around this controversy with contributions ranging from Gandhiji's condemnation of the devadasi system as 'a blot \.lpqn those who countenance it' to the intervention of social reformers like one Miss Tenant ·from London who conducted a signature campaign against the 'evil' system. In all this furore, it would seem that the i:levadasis themselves continued to be marginalised, apart from a few sporadic forums in which they attempted to represent themselves. For the most part they were represented by others. Ultimately, it would seem that Iyer's position proved to be victorious after the Kalyani daughters presented a highly successful concert at the Music Academy on January 1, 1933. This was followed by Rukmini Devi's formal debut as a Bharatanatyam artist at the International Convention of Theosophists held at Adyar, Madras. Originally groomed by Annie Besant and the Elders of the Theosophical Hierarchy as the chosen Vehicle for the World Mother, Rukmini Devi was· now formally backed by the Theosophical Society as one of the primary representatives of India's cultural

renaissance. 13 Needless to say, with such a strong nexus between the Brahmin Congress elite and the Theosophists, the 'battle' in favour of reviving Bharatanatyam was won. And yet, one ~ould hardly say that the rights and dignity of the devadasts had been served. What emerged through the promotion of Bharatanatyam was the affirmation of a new kind of 'national culture' that endorsed the religious and social aspirations of a predominantly Brahmin elite. By the time the Madras Legislative Assembly passed the Madras Devadasis (Prevention of Dedication) Act in 1947, almost seventeen years after Dr. Reddy had introduced the Devadasi Abolition Bill in the same Assembly, Bharatanatyam had already severed its ties from the 'devadasi syste11i' and was hailed by at least some of its supporters as 'the national art par excellence.' Much more can be said about the 'devadasi system', but I will limit myself here to a brief account of how the 'nation' was inscribed in the debate surrounding devadasis. 14 It would seem that the chief proponents of the Anti-Nautch movement spearheaded by Dr. Reddy were regarded as 'progressive nationalists' as opposed to 'conservative nationalists' like S. Sathyamurthy of the Madras Congress, who persistently opposed the passing of the Bill in the Madras Legislative Assembly. Sathyamurthy's opposition, however, was not motivated by any real concern for the devadasis themselves despite his attempts to mobilise their opinion. What became eminently clear at least to one section of the devadasts in Mayuram town was his concealed attempt to preserve a Brahmanic hegemony in matters of religion and culture. It was obvious that he feared that the abolition of devadasis could precipitate a non-Brahmin demand for 'the abolition of temple priests, who were Brahmins. ' 15 Thus, in the guise of preserving the devadasi system as part· of 'the indigenous Hindu/national culture', he was merely safeguarding his community's vested interests sanctified through religion. If the 'conservative' position, therefore, upheld the sanctity of the 'nation' within a larger Hindu framework, the 'progressive' stance was no less 'Hindu' in its propagation

•

of an alternative to the devadast system. For Dr. Reddy, who considered the · saving of 'one girl's honour and purity' · greater than the 'feeding of millions of our people', the rehabilitation of devadasis necessitated enforced marriages (with employment benefits for the husbands). Only then could these 'objectionable' breed of women become 'legal and chaste wives and loving mothers and useful citizens.' 16 Within this context, the middle-class nonns determining Dr. Reddy's 'progressive' reformatory zeal become only too evident. Where does one place the champions of Bharatanatyam within this spectrum of attitudes to the nation? On the one hand, they are linked through their class afflliations and predominantly western education to the 'progressive' politics of reformers like Dr. Reddy. On the other hand, in their overt divinisation of dance, there is a close affinity to the 'conservative' upholding of t(1lditional values. It would seem that the promoters of Bharatanatyam in the thirties imagined themselves to be 'progressive' while they were essentially 'conservative'. Thus, the 'sacred' dance had to be 'purified' of its 'baser elements.' Padams with licentious undertones had to be bowdlerised. Sbrlngara had to be doctored through bbaktt. In essence, dance had to be made respectable. Its aesthetic had to conform to the dominant nonns of decency upheld by the elite society of that time. In such a scenario, it is telling that Bharatanatyam ultimately catered to both the 'conservative' and 'progressive' representatives of nationalism, the Sathyamurthy and Reddy camps in our political culture. Under the leadership of Rukmini Devi, whose Kalakshetra founded in 1936 became the premier institution for the teaching of Bharatanatyam in India, the dance was associated with a certain 'aristocratic' aura, exemplifying the highest standards of artistic excellence to be found in our burgeoning 'national culture.' Along with this aristocracy of spirit, there was also an etherealisation of dance, or more specifically, of the female dancer, whose model was 'the ancient temple dancer, who is a pure and holy, chaste woman', the very antithesis of

the 'living devadasi.' 17 Over tl1e years, this model has been increasingly secularised through a steadily proliferating elite whose understanding of Bharatanatyam is less determined by a 'spiritual Yoga' than by the more crass aspirations associated with the promotion of social position and rank. Now th~ devadasi is no longer marginalised, she has been ruthlessly eliminated by a system ultimately controlled by politicians and the leading members of sa,bba~ to whom deference is almost obligatory if a dancer wishes to advance in her career. As Balasaraswati, who herself was born in a family of devadasis, put it caustically: 'They (the Brahmin elite) have taken away ·our dance and our profession.' BaJasar.swati's Parampara

It is in the legendary example of Balasaraswati in which, I believe, the distinctions between sadir na,,tcb, the 'devadasi system' and Bharatanatyam can be most meticulously studied. No one brought together the different strains of the parampara with greater depth than this extraordinary performer, who was at once steeped in tradition and yet capable of transmitting it to diverse audi~nces both at home and abroad in predominantly modem conditions of representation. At once worldly and deeply spiritual, she was able to see the ironies of the so-called 'transition' of sadir to Bharatanatyam with a combination of knowledge and pain which has yet to be studied seriously by dance scholars. It is too easy to rhapsodise about Balasaraswati and thereby reduce her to a 'phenomenon'. What is harder, I believe, is to see the multiple strains that constituted her complex personality which enabled her to 'travel' a greater distance imaginatively than almost any other performer in our dance tradition. Almost like a fiction, her connections to the court tradition of sadir can be traced through six generations descending from mother to daughter beginning with Papammal, who is said to have danced and sung in the Tiianjavur court in the 18th century, leading to her grand-

mother Veena Dhanam and mother Jayammal. 18 Bala-saraswati (one could say) had sadirin her blood. Connected to the parampara through her knowledge not only of dance but of music and literature as well, she was schooled at home in George Town, Madras, which was regarded by many connoisseurs as a 'seat of music.' From the absorbing interview with Balasaraswati conducted by N. Pattabhi Raman and Anandhi Ramachandran, we learn how her teachers were in and around the family. Her 'goddess' of a grandmother, as Balasaraswati described Veena Dhanam, interpreted legendary padams for her. Her mother on the other hand stimulated her profound understanding of ragabhava through song. Kandappa Nattuvanar was her relentlessly stem dance-master; Radhamma, a neighbour and scholar, taught her Tamil, Telugu and Sanskrit; Chinnaya_ Naidu would quiz her about particular nayikas (heroines) by singing short phrases relating to their attributes; Kuchipudi Vedantam Lakshminarayan Sastri, who instructed her in the art of improvising varnams, would occasionally ask her to 'cast the horoscope' of a particular tx»nam.

Not only was Balasaraswati's education wide in the sheer scale of its areas of knowledge, it was intrinsically creative. Thus, along with the rigour of her discipline to which she dedicated hours of work, she also had the extraordinary privilege to explore improvisations in which she performed entire songs only through facial expression, both with and without music. Such details fill one with awe about her preparation as a performer for transmitting the innermost subtleties of her tradition. Along with her thorough grounding in the sadir repertoire, which enabled her to select from 13 varnams, 97 padams, and 51 Java/is, 19 Balasaraswati was steeped in the devotional aspects of her dance. This is what enabled her to link the court heritage of sadtr to the 'devadasi tradition.' For her, bhakti and shringara, which are so often dichotomised, could not be separated: 'Shringara, which ~ considered to be the greatest obstacle to spiritual realisation, • has itself become an instrument for uniting the dancer with

Divinity. 20 Therefore the question of 'purifying' sbrtngara becomes a redundancy, if not an impertinence. Affmning the significance of Bharatanatyam as an 'artistic yoga', she had once imagined the passage of a dance recital within the structure, contours and inner space of a temple. Though her statement has been quoted on many _occasions, it is worth quoting at length for the sheer radiance of its conviction: The Bharatanatyam recital is structured like a Great Teniple: we enter through the gopura (outer hall) of alartppu, cross the ardbamandapam (half-way hall) of Jattswaram, then the mandapa (great hall) of sabadam, and enter the holy precinct of the deity in the varnam. This is the place, the space, which gives the dancer expansive scope to revel in the rhythm, moods, and music of the dance.... The padams now follow. In dancing the padams, one experiences the containment, cool and quiet, of entering the sanctum from its external precinct.... Dancing to the padam is akin to the juncture when the cascading lights of worship are withdrawn and the drum beats die down to the simple and solemn chanting of sacred verses in the closeness of God. Then, the tillana breaks into move111ent like the final burning of camphor accompanied by a measure of din and bustle. In conclusion, the devotee takes to his heart the god he has so far glorified outside; and the dancer completes the traditional order by dancing to a simple devotional verse. 21 Such is the density of thought and emotion in the passage that one can sense the intensity that Balasaraswati was able to bring to her immortal rendition of Krishna nee begane, baro. The preparation for such intensity, I believe, could not come entirely from her technique and discipline as a dancer. It was enhanced by her devotional faith that occasionally inspired her to dance within the sanctum of the temple itself. At least one such clandestine homage to Lord

Murugan at the Tiruttani temple (clandestine because dancing in temples was illegal with the passing of the Devadasi Act of 1947) convinced Balasaraswati that her 'career began to prosper again', and that her dance was essentially a 'religious offering' to which Lord Murugan had responded. 22 Such faith can only be ascribed to that of a 'believer.' Responding to this aspect of Balasaraswati's dance, Chandra (who is not a 'believer' in an orthodox sense) acknowledges: For Balasaraswati the act of worship was real, which has not been so for anyone else I have seen. For her, the gods were real, legends were real, ritual was real. This sense of the 'real' was conveyed in performance itself, where the parampara came alive with a depth of emotion. Recalling one such performance where Balasaraswati played Nandanar, the social outcast who seeks a glimpse of the Lord from outside the temple, Chandra remembers: . Bala could make us cry while depicting the story of Nandanar. She was able to create the scene of a massive crowd in the temple. She was able to show the attitude of a Paraya in Nandanar's body. Through the interstices between the people in the crowd, she showed us Nandanar trying to see. She showed us his pain. And on feeling this pain, people would cry. Today, if someone had to imitate exactly what Bala did, the experience would not be the same. The dramatic level could be sustained, but not the human. In this perceptive account, we begin to sense how Balasaraswati's 'traditional' aJt nurtured through sadtr and temple-worship could be 'transported' to secular spaces and audiences. Today, however, when we see Nandanar performed by some of our leading Bharatanatyam dancers, the

effect is, more often than not, hypocritical. The dancer, bejewelled and 'winsome', alternating between fixed smiles and expressions. of pain, rarely succeeds in 'becoming' Nandanar. Standing outside his body and state of consciousness, she 'exhibits' him rather than 'enters' and thereby 'transforms' his state of suffering. In the process, she merely aff"ums her own class and caste priorities, appropriating· his world-view with the support received from the predominantly elite members of her own society for whom she performs. I shall deal with the problems afflicting the contemporary Bharatanatyam 'cultural scene' at greater length in the course of this book. For the moment I would like to situate Chandra's attitude to the 'history' of Bharatanatyam within the larger framework that I have explored so far concerning the 'invention' of its tradition, the distinct (yet conflated) traditions of sadir in court and the temple, and the positions of dancers like Balasaraswati and Rukmini Devi in whom the parampara came alive in different ways.

Chandra's 'Devadasi' Chandra 's need to 'historicise' Bharatanatyam in the late fifties came out of a very different consciousness from the kind represented by Balasaraswati. Understandably, much has changed in Chandra's articulation about Bharatanatyam since that time, but the basic premises underlying her attitude to dance were already being formulated. · Like many reflective dancers, she had reached a point early in her career when she asked herself: 'Is the audience looking at my dance or at my appearance? I realised that they were actually seeing me as a "vivacious" and "attractive" woman. I questioned their appreciation. What satisfies the male mentality in the audience?' At one level, therefore, Chandra began to rebel against her dance career because of the way in which she was perceived. This perception in tum was determined by the larger 'culture~ supporting Bharatanatyam as a refined embodiment of 'traditional' and 'national' culture. It was this immediate questioning of

her own role as a dancer that compelled Chandra to view Bharatanatyam in a more critical context. Yet another impulse that contributed to Chandra's inquiry of her dance tradition emerged from her ideological resistance to its parampara. As I have examined earlier, she had access to Balasaraswati's school through Guru Ellappa Pillai. In her fonnative years, she dutifully learned a significant variety of items from the traditional repertoire, including full-length varnams lasting two hours. Even at that stage of 'submitting' to the tradition, it was clear to Chandra that its 'religious' context could not be entirely accepted. She herself was not religious. Her 'life-style' (as we put it so glibly these days) was assertively 'modem', if not 'radical'. Resolutely, she denied traditional 'Hindu' values relating to marriage and child-bearing, and to her credit she did not merely intellectualise her position through rhetoric but actually implemented it in her assertively independent life and relationships with men. At a more general social level, she was exposed to the cultures of the world, to the murals of Ajanta and the paintings of Picasso, the philosophy of Marx and Patanjali, Isadora Duncan and Balasaraswati. With such a cosmopolitan world-view, it is not surprising that Chandra could not immerse herself in the parampara with the kind of 'devotion' that Balasaraswati assumed. Once again, it is to the credit of Chandra that she never deceived herself about this fact, unlike so many dancers today who masquerade a homage to the gods on the stage while living a totally different kind of life off-stage. Early in her career Chandra knew that 'art' and 'life' had somehow to go together. The 'contradiction' that she had confronted in her arangetram was now beginning to manifest itself if not in performance, then certainly in the desire to 'historicise' her art more rigorously. Today Chandra's stand in relation to the parampara is much clearer. She prefers to tune into its principles and energies through levels of abstraction rather than narrative. When she does deal with a 'text', she either responds to it ironically (such as the direction of the 'male gaze' in her

representation of the varnam in Angika) or through a totally different kind of 'secular' narrative such as Bhaskaracharya's mathematical riddles posed to his daughter, Lilavati. In short, she has found her own ways of relating to the parampara which may still be too 'traditional' for some feminists, but as Chandra would put it: 'You don't throw away your culture when you reject some of its taboos, codes, rhetoric, and cliches.' On the other hand, Chandra is clear about what needs to be rejected. While acknowledging the 'levels of expressivity and experience' assumed by devadasis in the past, she is, nonetheless, compelled to emphasise: Today it is not possible to endorse all these skills and values. Women today are seeking out different areas of relationship devoid of male control. You have to be tuned to the consciousness of your time and space. This does not mean that we should give up sensuality. Rather, we should shed religiosity. It is this position which has guided Chandra over the years iri adopting a selective attitude to material with strong religious overtones. Already in the late fifties she was searching for new material in dance where 'religion' could be contextualised in a secular frame of thought rather than assumed as the foundation of dance. ·Thus, by 1959, Chandra began to conceptualise her first piece of choreography, a full-length production called Devadasi. This was her attempt to see Bharatanatyam in the larger context of its history, and thereby provide a critique (however veiled) about the divine origins of dance: 'I felt that dance doesn't belong to the temple or to the court or even to one's country. It must go back to the people, to the body.' Though the vigorous thrust of this statement may not have been fully embodied in the choreography of Devadasi, which continued to rely on traditional items from the Bharatanatyam recital, the attempt to make a personal (and political) statement about Bharatanatyam through dance must be regarded as one of the first ventures of its

kind contrasting sharply with the celebrated dance-dramas • performed in Kalakshetra which relied predominantly on mythological themes and stories. In Chandra's Devadasi, the COl)tent of the production came not so much from a story as from an examination of the historical continuum of dance itself. Not much is rerne1nbered of the production today which was staged only four times, on two occasions each in Madras and Bombay between 1960-61. Most of the details of its choreography (apart from the concluding tillana) have been forgotten. What Chandra renie1nbe1s, or perhaps, chooses to re1ne1nber today is the overall framewo.rk of the production. Already in this frame one realises Chandra's early ability to conceptualise dance which may be one of her strongest points as a choreographer. No longer entirely dependent on the directions provided by Guru Ellappa, Chandra was now more free to make her own state1nent about dance not in the context of a solo performance but through an ensemble of six dance1s. Indeed, Devadasl marked the beginning of a total departure from the 'solo tradition' of dance performance to which Chandra has never returned. Structured in a somewhat linear manner, Devadasl attempted to trace the evolution of Bharatanatyam through its manifestations in the te111ple, court, and the modern stage. While the context of the te1nple was aeated through the performance of a pusbpanjali with traditional sollukattus (rhythmic syllables), this demonstration of faith was contrasted with the more erotic performance of varnams specifically addressed to the rulers of the Thanjavur court. Then followed sequences depicting the gradual decline in the dancer's status, her social ostracism, the consequences of the Devadasi Abolition Bill, leading to the 'revival' of dance in the thirties. Breaking the chronology was a somewhat contriyed 'flashback' evoking the art of legendary dan~s like Ambapali and M~avi (from Silappadikaram). Concluding the production was a rousing tillana with four dancers in which Chandra's 'statement' probably came through with the greatest vigour: the need for dance to be centered in the primary energies of the body, resistant to

the larger constraints imposed on dancers through the temple, the court, and the state. Despite the seeming clarity of this overall structure, it is, perhaps, necessary to acknowledge that the production is a blur today, almost as hazy as the gauze drapes that were used in the background to enhance its very rudimentary sense of design. Instead of attempting to 'reconstruct' the production from non-existent clues, it would be more useful, I think, to examine the concept of the production, and at a later stage, to provide a more detail~d account of the Tillana. which concluded it. Fortunately, this piece was revived as an independent item in 1984 and has also been recorded on video, enabling us to study some of the most basic principles of Chandra's choreography. Conceptualising 'Devadasi'

Regarding the concept of the production, 'I think one needs to question the linearity of Chandra's narrative which has also been duplicated in her later work Angika. Here, too, a clear historical continuum is assumed in depicting a dancer integrated within the ritualistic context of the temple, then gradually demeaned and eroticised through the 'male gaze' of spectators in court, followed by her degradation as a prostitute. Historically, this kind of chronology is simply too neat a reading of a dancer's status and subsequent decline. Even a perfunctory reading of the lives of court dancers and devadasis in the temple reveals that they were simultaneously 'honoured' and patronised by the kings. They were at once distinctly subsumed within two separate contexts, yet related through a common system of patronage. Therefore the question of viewing the det.Jadasi as somehow preceding the role of the court dancer is misleading. What would be more pertinent would be to examine how the dancers in the temple and court were discriminated within the overall patriarchy. The more problematic aspect of locating the devadasi at the very 'beginning' of the 'history' of dance unavoidably

enhances a mystification of her role. To show her declining from this 'imagined' status through her cosmetic objectification in court to the degraded status of the prostitute, somehow essentialises the 'purity' of the devadasi, as if her dedication to god was somehow more 'wholesome' than her eventual capitulation to men. The scenario is charged with all kinds of contradictory possibilities of interpretation which Chandra would be only too prepared to deal with today, and go beyond. In 196061, however, it is obvious that she was still subscribing to the_ dominant 'progressive' nonns of her time by viewing the devadasi as a victim of historical tendencies. This position could have been more effectively problematised had it not also subscribed to the euphoria surrounding the 'revival' of dance in the thirties. Here Chandra's position does become complicated because she openly demonstrated her 'support' for the movement by honouring the figures of Rukmini Devi and Balasaraswati. Indeed, in the first performance of Devadast at the Raja Annamalai Manram Theatre in Madras, both these legendary figures were seated in the audience, while the dancers on stage garlanded their portraits as part of the overall performance. At some level, this sequence can almost seem like a publicity stunt, bordering on sycophancy. It would have been an entirely different matter if Chandra had chosen to honour Rukmini Devi or Balasaraswati without eulogising them unconditionally. But I am also compelled to accept that she respects both these women in their own right. Today, if Chandra had to revise Devadasi, it is likely that she would continue to honour the memory of these great dancers, but I think she would also contextualise the so-called 'revival' of Bharatanatyam in a more critical framework. In all probability, she would link it to her increasing distrust of the 'pan-Indian nationalism' that has determined the 'official culture' of India in the last decade, particularly its control of dance activities. · Like all early productions, Devadasi needs to be placed within the context of its historical moment. The late fifties

we should remember, were among the most buoyant and hopeful years for the majority of Indian artists. As yet art had not been bureaucratised through a surfeit of cultural institutions. The attitude of the government towards .the arts was also somewhat more 'concerned', perhaps because it had yet to formulate its policies. As such, the early 'national' seminars on dance, theatre, film held in the mid-fifties opened up all kinds of possibilities, even though some of the problems affiicting Indian artists today were already being raised in these early forums. The point is that it was still possible in the fifties to hope for a vibrant, secular culture in India by drawing on a diverse range of languages and performance idioms. Though the 'regionalisation' of 'Indian culture' had already begun to surface, it was still possible for artists to 'meet' through an exchange of differences. 'Territorialities' were far less defined. Also there was a greater camaraderie among the performers, much less competition and backbiting. This is what made it possible for two seeming 'rivals' like Rukmini Devi and Balasaraswati to honour the 'opening night' of a young dancer's choreography with their gracious presence. Perhaps, it should also be remembered that Harindranath Chattopadhyay was personally known to both these artists, and as master of ceremonies for Devadasi, his invitation to attend the perfonnance must have carried additional weight. Though Chandra's autonomy in conceptualising and mounting the production was undeniable, Harindranath continued to provide his suggestions. While Guru Ellappa was Chandra's 'point of reference' for matters concerning the selection of music in the temple and court sequences, Harindranath was her sounding-board for the historical framework of the production. It is only inevitable that his own rhetoric coloured the commentary for the production, which he narrated in counterpoint to the dances performed on stage. Though the text of his commentary no longer exists, it undeniably played a vital factor in holding the production together, and perhaps, authenticating it through the sheer force of his personality. From this use of commentary, we en.c ounter a recurring

feature in Chandra's work as a choreographer: her need to introduce or even interrupt the performance through speech. In each of her productions, Chandra's vacika (as I like to call it) is absolutely vital for both our understanding and enjoyment of her work. The significant difference in Devadasi, of course, is that the commentary was Baba's. It was bis voice that connected, substantiated, and verified her particular way of seeing the 'history' of Bharatanatyam. Today, it would be simply unthinkable for Chandra to allow anyone to speak for her during the performance. In fact, her vocal contribution is so vital that Sadanand, her close friend and critic, dismisses the possibilities of a 'ghost voice'. To hear Chandra necessitates that we see her on stage, articulating her philosophy of the body with a presence that is. inimitably hers. When Chandra remembers Devadasi today, she does so sparingly. It is obvious that she has left the production behind. What she does remember, however, are the numerous problems she faced in holding her small company together, and most of all, the 'detested' system of mothers chaperoning their daughters to rehearsal. Unbelievable as it may sound, it appears that Chandra even learned how to drive a car to provide an alternative escort service for her dancers. Among the most reliable contributors to the production were Vidya Shankar, a seasoned veena player who is one of Chandra's most trusted friends even to this day, and an American dancer called Robin Squire who stimulated Chandra's emerging ideas about choreography with her own first-hand perspectives on the work of Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. It should be remembered that choreography was a relatively new concept in the world of classical Indian dance in the fifties. While most Bharatanatyam dancers continued to elaborate on traditional items with stylistic changes associated with different schCX>ls of nattuvangam, there was little attempt to view the 'science of organising movement in space' (which is how Chandra defines choreography) within new narrative structures and ensembles. The one notable exception was Rukmini Devi who

createts, Gro\vth and Revival lJy Sunil Kothari, op.cit. For a succinct account of this 'battle', read Mohan Khokar's 'A Momentous Transition·, op.cit. , pp.41-47. Arnrit Srinivasan. ·Refonn and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance', op.cit.. p.1874. Tht' information and thrust of argument in this paragraph are drawn from 'Rt'presenting Dt'vadasis: IJtiszgal .\fnsavalai as a Radical Text'

15. 16. 17. 18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

by Anandhi S., op.cit., pp.739-741. Ibid., p.740. Ibid. Amrit Srinivasan, 'Refonn and Revival: The Devadasi and Her Dance', op.cit., p.1875. By far the most engrossing account of Balasaraswati's thoughts on dance are contained in the article 'T. Balasaraswati: The Whole Word in Her Hands' by N. Pattabhi Raman and Anandhi Ramachandran, originally published in Srutt and reprinted in Sanseet Natale, AprilSeptember 1984, pp.15-54. The infonnation in the following two paragraphs of my text is drawn from this article. For a detailed list of the varnams, padams, and javalis, see 'Balasara~wati's Repertoire', Sangeet Natale, April-September 1984, pp.70-74. T. Balasara~wati, 'On Bharatanatyam', Sangeet Natak, April-September 1984, p .11. Ibid., pp.8-10. N. Pattabhi Raman and Anandhi Ramachandran, 'T. Balasa~wati: The Whole World in Her Hands', op.cit., p.54. Chandralekha, 'Choreography in the Indian Context', paper presented at Music Academy Annual Conference, Madras, December 27, 1984, later reprinted in Indian and World Arts and Crafts, April 1991, p.3. Ibid. Recorded in the valuable video documentation of the lecture demonstration at Kalakshetra. Also quoted in all the publicity folders of Chanclralekha 's productions.

Cbapter Three 1. 2.

3. · 4. 5.

6. 7.

Coomi Kapoor with Sunil Kothari, 'Breaking the Bonds', India Today, May 15, 1985, p .132. All references to Kamala in this section are taken from the original copy of the manuscript in Chandralekha 's personal archives. Though sections of the prose-poem have been serialised in the Illustrated Weekly of India, the original manuscript remains the most reliable text not least because it includes the author's corrections and changes in punctuation. Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1949, p.261 . Ibid., p.262. Dr. Chaganty Suryanarayanmurthy, editor and commentator of Sri Laltta Sabasranamam. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1989. All references to the text in this paragraph are taken from this edition. Chandralekha, interview with Sai Prashanti, 'Sculpting Space', Indian Express, February 16, 1985. Sadanand Menon, 'Chanclralekha - Putting the Spine back in Bharatanatyam', unpublished article.

8.

9.

1.

2.

3.

4.

For a more detailed examtoatJon of Muthuswamy Dtksbtt.ar's navagmba /trills, read description of Cbaodr.alekha's producdon of Prana discussed tn Qiapter Nine. Chandralekha, 'Syntbeslslog lodtao Pbyslcal Tradltloos', unpublished artlcle.

V.S. Nalpaul, India: A Wound,d Civilization, Penguin Books, 1987, p.123. See, for lMtaot-e, the conceptual backgrt>uod provided by Blswaroop Das 1n 'Nature, Types and Oiaracter of Voluntary Olpotntlooa The- Case of West Bengal,' Man & Development, Vol. X (3), September 1988. For a broader context · on the speclfic dme-frame of ~ktDs' activities, read Franda Marcus, Voluntary Associations ·and Local Development In. India: 1be Janata PbtUe. New Delhi: Young Asia, 1983. I am grateful to Biswaroop Das for provkttng me with a oogent background on the subjec.t of "voluntary associations.' 1be log-book Is a band-made book 1n which all the actlvtdes of the workshop are documented. It ts a telling remtnder that workshops on •education' and •social trao.sfoimatlon' need not deny the aesthedcs of their representation. The text of thts log contains some of Sadanand's IDO'l lucid and eloquent wrltlog &om which I quote extensively tn the following sections. Hopefully, 1n dme to come, this log-book will be published along with Chandra's writlop and graphics. See my 'Letter to the Dead', pubUshed 1n the Economic and PolUlcal WeeAPly, April 15, 1989.

Cb•pter .FIYe

1.

Anees Jung, conversation with Susanne Linke, Chandralekba, and Georg Lechner, And the feet begin to speak .. .' 1be nmn of India, February 12, 1984. Sunll Kothari, Hlstory: RootS, Growth and Revival', Bbarota Natyatn: Indian Classical Dance Art. Bombay: Marg Publications, 1979, p.24. See also Uttara Asha Coorlawala 's comprehensive study of 'St. Denis a(ld India's Dance Renaissance,' Sanseet Natal, No. 104: April-June 1992. Doris Humphrey, An Arttst Rrst. Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 1972. See in particular the chapter entltled '1be Orient', pp.4453, and 'The Br~aklng Point', pp.62-63. Chandralekha, 'Contemporary Relevance tn Traditional Dance A Personal Note', paper delivered at the first East-West Dance Encounter, later published in the NCPA Quarte,ly Journal, June 1984. All quotations tn the following four paragraphs are taken &om this paper. 1

2.

3.

4.

1

s. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

1_.. lS.

Quoced In Aoeea Juol'• •coaver11don' entltJed •And the feet begin to ape•k .. ,' lbkL lbkl. See Saa. T. Belaaaruwad'a -Presidendal Address' lnduded lo 7h }ounulJ of 1H Ma,sk AcaM•y, Vol.XLV, 197_., p.18; also Dr. V. R•ghavan'a 'Bbarata Natya' puhlhbed ID the eiame Issue, p.2..9. Quoted In Aneea Jung's 'converudoa' wtah Cbanctnl~kba and ~ . •And the feet begin to speak... ', Ibid. O,,odnlekba. inten1ew wtah Amrtla Abraham, -You cannot tran•late the u1Une•s of life dlrecdy Into daoc,e'. 7h Sundtly Om,n,wr, February 12, 19M. Sedemnd Menon, 'Dancen' Dllen,rna•, SUnillly Om,n,wr, Ap-11 19M. Cbandnlekba~ ~ou cannot fl?nelate the "glloe•• of life dlrecdy Into daoc,e', Ibid. S•dtnaod Menoa, ·Dancers• Dilemma', lbkL Cbandralekba~ -You canoo« fl?nslate the "gltrw:11 of life dlrecdy Into da!'Ce', Ibid. Prla Devi, 1be 0er¥"e, 1be Daocer and Dealp fOI' Dance', 7h India MtlBIUIM, Mardi 1987, pp.8')-91. Ibid.

Ospter St& 1. 2.

3.

Dr. Arudra, 'Cba!'dralekba'4 A,,,,_: Strtklog a Blow fOI' Jooovatloo,' Snlll, 198S, p.S3. A.put &om the visual luero8IYPhs of the 'bee' and 'Garuda' held on the outer e1herot1les of~ 111d, there are a number of famtUar aMw used In the -Q)smk.- Energy' sequence. Tboup there have been cbanrs tbroup the produttloN, the ,_, ltilpldosana and the urdb11t1 padmasana uaed to be. perf"1med at 8oor level lo the middle raw. lo the fo,me,, the body Is acwcbed oo the 8001' wtah the bead placed between the knees which are pressed ~plo-tt the ears ('kama'). 1be ·urdbva padmasana reveala a 'lotus seen ftom above.' For n,ore details oo these asana.s, coosuh Sri B.K. lyenpr's •~•bwlladve study U,bt on Yo,a. Loadon: Unwtn Pape,becka> 198'). In the &oat row, Aebok Kumer used to pettOim the cbatur-poda aMna In wh1ch be would lower bJa bands on the ground, bJa forehead toucblna die koH.s, so tbat It would ahnost seem as .If he bad four feet.' 1ben, mo,t powerfully, be would stand. stietch his lep, and throw his· head back as far as possible with his hands d•tped bebtad lo a wrist-bold, the- chest thrown out. Compl~mentlna this ftow of enetlf, Nagln (also In the first row, Oil the other aide of the 111d) would perform the adbo m1,llba aonasana, the •downward Jookln& dos' &om whlch position be would move Into the lt..:»sasana ('the tortolae'). Nandlkeavara, Abbl,u,yada,P.,Jtatn, edited and trarwated by

Dr. Manmohan Ghosh. Calcutta: Manisha Granthalaya Private Limited, 1989, p.36. 4. Describing the space created between the legs of the aramandi as a 'rhombus', Dr. V. Raghavan adds that, 'The Sanskrit text Nrttaratnavalt calls it (the aramand{) Kharvata and mentions twelve inches for this lowering of the body; the Tamil text of Aramvalattanar says that if you measure the di~1ance between the two knees bent in Mandala, the two should be equal.' ('Bharata Natya,' 1be j,n,rnaJ of the MtLOC Academ_v, Vol. XLV, 1974, pp. 252-253.) 5. From V. Raghavan we learn that, 'In an Adavu, we have a particular placement of the hand-foot unit, a particular kind of beating of the floor and a particular further movement of the hand-foot unit, till it reaches a second point at which the hand-foot unit takes on a different pose and a further or different fl90r-beating occurs. These units are woven into patterns and these patterns into larger sequences.' 'Bharata Natya,' ibid., p. 250. 6. For details of these terms, consult A Dictionary of Bharata Natya, compiled by U. S. Krishna Rao. Hyderabad: Orient Longman Limited, 1990. 7. Excerpted from Chandralekha's description of her overall concept of Angika which she used to read aloud during the early performances. Typewritten manuscript, unpublished. 8. For the ritualistic context of the pushpanjali, read Saskia C. Kersenboom-Story, Nityasumangalt: Devadasi Tradttie in Moscow', ibid.

Cbapter Twelve

1.

For a contextualisation of Sri within the larger spectrum of mothergoddesses, read Kamala Ganesh's 'Mother Who is Not a Mother: In Search of the Great Indian Goddess', &onomtc and Political Weekly, October 20-27, 1990, pp. WS58-64; PupulJayakar's study of 1be F.arth Mother. New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1989, p. 170; and David Kinsley's Hindu Goddesses. New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1987. 2. The phrase is excerpted from Chandralekha's 'Who are these ageold female figures?', 1be &onomtc Times, March 8, 1992. 3. F..xcerpted from Alice Schwarzer's interview with Simone de Beauvoir in Marie-Claire, October 1976, included in New French Feminisms, New York: Schocken Books, 1981, p. 153. 4. This is profusely illustrated in Sukumari Bhattacharya's study of 'Motherhood in Ancient India', Economic and Political Weekry, October 20-27, 1990, p . WS-53. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. pp. WS-55 to 56. All quotations in this paragraph are drawn from these pages. 7. Ibid. 8. Chandralekha, 'Constitution and Family Law: Feminine Perspective: Family and Freedom', typewritten manuscript, originally delivered as a lecture at the Max Mueller Bhavan, March 6-11, 1989. All quotations in the following two paragraphs are taken from this lecture. 9. Ibid. 10. Interview with Vibhuti Patel, Bombay, January 1990. 11 . Interview with Neela Bhagwat, Bombay, January 1990.

PROTO CAPl'IONS Col/ff' O.rdaalekht perfuaodn1 ~,kamNwi' sequence In 'Sri' 1 ~•maskar' under the Adyar banyan 2 Cbandnlekba~ 1991 3 Chandralekba,. 1968

4' Youn& cJJandn S with 'Baba' Hariwlraoarb 6 With Guru EJlappa PIiiai 7 \ilb Mababvt Va!hebol and 8h • 1111 "8111 le9 rl Baks•w wad 8 Cbandr~kba In 'vtnhanaytka', abb•naya sequence, 1967 9 With Kamedev In 'Navagraba', 1972 10 AAB 1973 Po•n-aalendar for Ail' tndta baaed oo the Navagraba 11 In tbk:k of a 9'0f&o'a nl1y apto• obecco'!y, 19n 12 'Tfllaoa' rehearsal at NCPA, Bombay, for 'Ea•-Weat Dance Encounter', 19M - 1boee s1ttto1 iodude (from left to rtaf,t) Vklya ~baobr, Udupl J,aksbrnioaPyan, Kamadev, Bhupen Kbakar. Soll Badlwala, Sachoaod Menon, Sootl Koaha,., Sona) Ma0-,higb and am,~.ekha

13 Eolraoce to 'Mandala' 14' Ja,•tde the ?datvlaJa' lS 'Naravabaoa', woma11 rtdtoa man, &om •Aogtka'. 1992 16 From 'Anglka', 198S 17 Martial sequence, a.rbwi Ox,ne) vadlvu &om 'Ao&lb' 18 Martial _sequence, """""' (Cud) vadlvu &oai ~Aoglka' 19 TIJlaoa floale of 'An&lka' 20 TIJlaoa ftoale of 'Anglka' 21-U From 'Anglka', perf~nMl¥'e at Tramway, Gia...,, 1992 2S 'Nameskar' sequence In Kremlto, for Festival of lactta ioaupral, 1987 26 ~ k b a introdudn& 'IJlavad' foir Doordarsbao recordln& 1988 27-3"' From 'Ulavad' 3S Cbandral~kha's fote1pre11doo of 'Surya' In 'Praaa'. 198') 36 ~nlng sequence of 'Pram' 37-4'S 1be nine grahas and their J>Ofldona "'6-4'9 From 'Praoa' SO Pre-perfor1111ace d\aal - a private before 101a& public Sl Poster by C-bandrdekha. 1981 S2-SS Posten by Chandralfokba. 1983-1988 S6-S7 From 'One More News' by a.actralekba, 1987 S8-S9 From 'Fire, Q>uoter-flre' by a.actralekha, 198S 60-6S Cbandralekba perfOl'IDml 'Sakambbart' sequence In 'Sri', 1992 66-69 From 'Sri' 70 Drearntn1 oo the sw1o& 71 From 'Yantta', 1994'

72-7S From 'Yanira' 76 'N•maskaf' on the beach · Bae/, Jae_, Concluding moment of Chandralekha's ·sakambhari' sequence in 'Sri' Photo Credits

All photographs by Dashrath Patel except cover, back jacket and nos. 60-65 by Be1nJ Merzenich, and no.,. 2, 11 and 76 by Sadanand Menon.

Index

.

.Abblnayada,pana, 88, 150 Akerman, Owual, 284 adavu, 100, 155-156, 184, 217, 219-222, 224, 226-227, 246, 338 alaripp,1, 40, 48, 66 .Ansama¥Z!a., 180-182, 185-188 Anpraka, 229 .An,IAra, 2, 52, 54, 69, 84, 100, 112, 123, 125, 139, 147-180, 182, 18'), 195, 'JJJ7, 227, 241-244, 246, 253, 263-265,

c.artier-Bre•oo, Henri, 95